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In this paper, a large Hungarian spoken language database is introduced. This phonetically-based multi-purpose database contains various types of spontaneous and read speech from 333 monolingual speakers (about 50 minutes of speech sample per speaker). This study presents the background and motivation of the development of the BEA Hungarian database, describes its protocol and the transcription procedure, and also presents existing and proposed research using this database. Due to its recording protocol and the transcription it provides a challenging material for various comparisons of segmental structures of speech also across languages.

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Numerous investigations have identified weaknesses in speech processing and language skills in children with dyslexia; however, little is known about these abilities in children with reading difficulties (RD). The primary objective of this investigation was to determine the utility of auditory speech processing tasks in differentiating children with RD from those with typical reading skills. It was hypothesized that children, who perform below grade level in reading, would also show poorer performance on both dichotic listening and sentence repetition tasks because of the reciprocal influences of deficient auditory speech processing and language abilities. A total of 180 Hungarian-speaking, monolingual 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children, with and without RD, participated in dichotic listening and sentence repetition (modified by noise and morphosyntactic complexity) tasks. Performances were compared across ability groups, age and gender. Children with RD evidenced significantly poorer performance than controls on both tasks. Effects for age and gender were more noticeable in students with RD. Our findings support the notion that reading deficiencies are also associated with poor auditory speech processing and language abilities in cases where dyslexia is not diagnosed. We suggest that these tasks may be used as easy and fast screening tests in the identification of RD.

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The purpose of this paper is to see if Hungarian /aː/, a well-behaved back vowel in terms of vowel harmony and of its phonological properties in general, is indeed a proper back vowel phonetically, too. Native speakers of this language (including some Hungarian linguists) seem to have the impression that the vowel /aː/ is realised in present-day Hungarian more or less as a front vowel. However, there have been no reliable objective measurements to support or to contradict that impression so far. In the present investigation it turns out that there is a historical change going on in Hungarian in the articulation gesture of /aː/. The paper also offers some discussion as to whether that change in the phonetic makeup of this vowel should be reflected by its phonological analysis (feature composition). The dilemma we face is one between increased abstractness and increased complexity of analysis.